FRENCH 210 - French Literature and Culture from the Enlightenment to the Present

A study of major authors comprising the French canon (18th-21st centuries): Montesquieu, Beaumarchais, Balzac, Flaubert, Sartre, Duras, and Toussaint.

Prerequisites: At least one unit of 206, 207, 208, or 209, or an SAT II score of 690-800, an AP score of 5 or an equivalent departmental placement score.

A tripartite introduction to French literary studies through readings of 18th-21st century authors in their historical and cultural contexts, along with readings of a number of poems from the same periods:

1) From the Ancien Régime to the Revolution. Consideration of pre-Revolutionary social satire in Montesquieu's epistolary novel Lettres Persanes and Beaumarchais' play Le Mariage de Figaro (1784), with special consideration of how they open the way for challenges to social, economic and political disparities, and usher in social and literary Revolutions.

2) Enrichissez-vous! Balzac’s Sarrasine and Flaubert’s “Un Coeur Simple” are explored as the expression and commentary on this new war cry in 19th-century industrial France.

3) War Writings: War and writing in the twentieth-century works of Sartre (“Le Mur”) and Duras (“Albert des Capitales”), which open onto questions of commitment, resistance and betrayal; followed by Toussaint’s unexpected brief prose on the fallen soccer star Zidane, which offers a darkly humorous 21st-century score on French identity and the history of French (literary) Republics.

Readings:

Montesquieu, Les Lettres Persanes
Beaumarchais,Le Mariage de Figaro
Balzac, Sarrasine
Flaubert, “Un Coeur Simple”
Jean-Paul Sartre, “Le Mur”
Marguerite Duras, “Albert des Capitales”
Jean-Philippe Toussaint, La Mélancolie de Zidane